I. – A general tax on polluting activities has been introduced and is payable by the following natural or legal persons:
1. a) Any person receiving hazardous or non-hazardous waste and operating a facility subject to authorisation, pursuant to Title I of Book V of the Environmental Code, under a heading of the nomenclature of classified facilities relating to the storage or thermal treatment of such waste ;
b) Any person who ships waste or has waste shipped to another State pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1013/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 June 2006 on shipments of waste;
2. Any operator of a facility subject to authorisation or registration under Book V (Title I) of the Environmental Code whose maximum thermal output in the case of combustion facilities, capacity in the case of facilities for the thermal treatment of household waste, or the weight of the substances mentioned in 2 of Article 266 septies emitted in one year when the facility does not fall into the above categories, exceeds certain thresholds set by decree in the Conseil d’Etat;
3 (paragraph repealed with effect from 1st January 2005) ;
4 (Repealed) ;
5. Any person who, for the needs of his economic activity, delivers for the first time in France, outside the collectivities governed by Article 74 of the Constitution, New Caledonia, the French Southern and Antarctic Territories and Clipperton Island, or uses for the first time there washing preparations, including auxiliary washing preparations, or softening products or fabric softeners falling respectively under the headings 34022090, 34029090 and 38091010 to 38099100 of the customs tariff;
6. a) Any person who, for the needs of his economic activity, delivers for the first time in France, outside the collectivities governed by Article 74 of the Constitution, New Caledonia, the French Southern and Antarctic Lands and Clipperton Island, extraction materials of all origins occurring naturally in the form of grains or obtained from crushed or fractionated rocks, the largest dimension of which is less than or equal to 125 millimetres and the characteristics and uses of which are laid down by decree;
b) Any person who, for the needs of his economic activity, uses materials mentioned in a above for the first time in the territory mentioned in a above;
7 (Repealed) ;
8 (Repealed) ;
9 (Repealed) ;
10 (Repealed)
II. – The tax does not apply to :
1 (Repealed) ;
1 bis. Receipts of waste and shipments of waste to another State where it is intended to be recovered as a material;
1 ter. Receipt of waste construction and insulation materials containing asbestos and waste personal protective equipment and collective protective equipment contaminated by asbestos fibres;
1c (Repealed) ;
1d. Receipts of waste generated by a natural disaster, the condition of which is recorded by decree, between the date of the start of the disaster and up to two hundred and forty days after the end of the disaster. Non-taxable quantities are accounted for separately;
1e. Receipts of non-hazardous waste by co-incineration facilities;
1 septies. Receipts, for the purpose of producing heat or electricity, of waste prepared, in an authorised facility set up for this purpose, in the form of solid recovered fuel, whether or not combined with another fuel;
1g. Receipts of residues resulting from the treatment of waste the receipt of which fell within the scope of the tax when one of the following two conditions is met:
a) These residues constitute hazardous waste and the waste from which they are derived has undergone thermal treatment ;
b) These residues constitute non-hazardous waste which it is not technically possible to recover. A decree shall specify the elements characterising this technical impossibility;
1 nonies. Receipts of waste falling within the scope of the domestic consumption tax on energy products provided for in Articles 265, 266 quater, 266 quinquies and 266 quinquies B respectively;
1 decies. Receipts, other than those covered by 1 nonies of this II, of hydrocarbons undergoing thermal treatment without being combusted with a view to their recovery;
1 undecies. Receipts of waste that does not decompose, burn or produce any other physical or chemical reaction, is not biodegradable and does not deteriorate other materials with which it comes into contact in a way likely to cause environmental pollution or harm human health;
1k. Receipts of waste whose recovery is prohibited or whose disposal is prescribed. The list of waste concerned is specified by joint order of the ministers responsible for the budget and the environment;
1l. The receipt of waste from an unauthorised deposit of abandoned waste whose producers cannot be identified and which the local authority responsible for the collection and treatment of household waste does not have the technical capacity to handle. The impossibility of identifying the producers and the technical inability to take charge of the waste are recorded, under conditions specified by decree, by prefectoral order, for a period of no more than three months, renewable once if necessary;
1m. Facilities used exclusively for waste that the operator produces;
1n. Receipts of waste from a storage facility where the waste was previously received and which :
a) either has not been in operation since 1 January 1999 ;
b) Or has been the subject of an authorisation for the storage of waste, but is no longer in operation on the date the waste is transferred;
1o. Receipts, other than those covered by 1h of this II, of waste with a view to transforming it, by thermal treatment, into fuels which are intended either to cease to be waste within the meaning of Article L. 541-4-3 of the Environmental Code, or to be used in an authorised co-incineration facility;
1 septdecies. On receipt, at a storage facility, of hazardous waste from residues resulting from the treatment of waste, where the following conditions are cumulatively met:
a) The facility for storing the residues and the facility for treating the waste from which they come are located on the same plot of land;
b) The waste treated falls into the following categories listed in the Annex to Commission Decision 2000/532/EC of 3 May 2000 replacing Decision 94/3/EC establishing a list of wastes pursuant to Article 1(a) of Council Directive 75/442/EEC on waste and Council Decision 94/904/EC establishing a list of hazardous waste pursuant to Article 1(4) of Council Directive 91/689/EEC on hazardous waste:
-drilling muds and other drilling wastes, with the exception of freshwater drilling ;
-Soil, including spoil from contaminated sites, stones and dredging sludge;
-grit removal waste from wastewater treatment plants;
-minerals, e.g. sand or pebbles, constituting waste from the mechanical treatment of waste, e.g. sorting, shredding, compacting or granulation;
-sludge from soil decontamination;
-soil and stones constituting garden and park waste;
c) The waste treatment plant has the following characteristics:
-its emissions of substances into the atmosphere are below the thresholds provided for in 2 of I of this article;
-at the end of the treatment operation, the quotient between, in the numerator, the mass of all the products that have been the subject of material recovery during the calendar year within the meaning of Article L. 541-1-1 of the Environmental Code and, in the denominator, the mass of all the waste received by the treatment facility during the same period, as recorded by the competent inspection body for classified installations, is at least equal to 70%;
2. Industrial effluent injection plants authorised in application of article 84 of law no. 2003-699 of 30 July 2003 relating to the prevention of technological and natural risks and the repair of damage;
3. The products mentioned in 6 of I of this article, which are the result of a recycling operation or which have a dry product content of at least 97% silicon oxide;
4. Washing preparations, including auxiliary washing preparations, fabric softeners and extraction materials, mentioned respectively in 5 and 6 of I of this article when the first delivery after national manufacture consists of a direct dispatch to a Member State of the European Community or an export;
5 (Repealed) ;
6. Biodegradable, non-ecotoxic lubricants of renewable origin complying with the criteria defined for the Community eco-label for lubricants in European Commission Decision No 2005/360/EC of 26 April 2005 establishing the ecological criteria and the related assessment and verification requirements for the award of the Community eco-label to lubricants;
7 (Repealed).
III. – (Repealed).
IV. – II applies only to receptions carried out in installations authorised under Title I of Book V of the Environment Code, in compliance with the requirements of this authorisation relating to the categories of waste and associated treatments, the geographical origin of the waste, the period of operation of the installation or its annual or total capacity limits.
The same II also applies, with the exception of 1m, under the same conditions, to shipments of waste outside France with a view to their reception by a facility governed, in the State in which it is located, by regulations having equivalent effect to this authorisation.